this weeks blog is a SPECIAL one. my super dope sister, kaylen, wrote an awesome blog on going home. she’s got lots of experience living in south africa (she was a missionary here for a year!). thanks kay, love you.
enjoy 🙂
Coming home is hard. It may seem like it would be this wonderful experience because all of a sudden you have air conditioning and access to more than two outfits and you can drive to the store whenever you need something. The fruit is all guaranteed fresh and so is the milk. You’re surrounded by all of your family members, your friends, and your pets. In spite of all of these things–or maybe because of them?–coming home is hard.
You’ve spent the last however long becoming comfortable in discomfort. You’ve gotten used to disruptions, unpredictabilities, and always-changing scenery. You’ve developed skills in meeting new people and saying goodbyes. You’ve adapted to eating new things, to eating whatever’s available instead of what you want, and to sometimes not eating. So when you come home, surrounded by comfort and choice, you will feel out of place, bored, and a little claustrophobic.
Coming home also means being really misunderstood. You’ll have to accept that no one will understand your travel and your experience the way that your trip-mates will. And that’s okay. People will ask you all about your trip, and you’ll need to find ways to shrink it and make it relatable. Don’t think of it as dishonoring your trip; think of it as translating your experiences into something that will benefit the person asking you. One of the best tips I received when I was transitioning home was this: have 3 layers of responses. When people ask you about your trip, have one word that you think sums up most of your emotions. This is Layer 1. If they ask you follow-up questions, move on to Layer 2 by sharing a short, specific memory that you feel represents your experiences. This is where most people will stop. Your closest friends and family will get to Layer 3. This is where you share multiple experiences with them over the days and weeks that you acclimate to home. Even though your family members will try their hardest to understand you, they ultimately won’t in a lot of ways. Forgive them for this–it doesn’t mean they aren’t trying.
Over the coming months and years, it will be up to YOU to make permanent your experiences. You do this by digging deeply through and into your memories and experiences to find the essential truth at its core. Let your trip change something inside of you. Reflect, journal, keep coming back to different memories, relationships, and experiences to drain them of their life lessons and essential truths. Don’t mourn that you’re back home–embrace what the trip has done to change you and thank it for the role it played in your life.
